Appreciating Hayle: a Little Historical Background

Appreciating Hayle: a little historical background Principal Sources: 1 Hayle Historical Assessment Nick Cahill and the Cornwall Archaeology Unit, 2000 2 Hayle Town Trail Brian Sullivan, 1983 3 The Harveys of Hayle: engine builders, shipwrights and merchants of Cornwall Edmund Vale, 1966 4 CCC: the history of the Cornish Copper Company W H Pascoe, 1981 Hayle's World Significance Hayle may appear to be an unremarkable town behind a beautiful bay of golden sands and surf. But taking a little time to understand it offers an insight into an historic industrial port and town of global significance. Cornwall's Technology and its World Heritage Site Winning Cornwall's mineral wealth stimulated a global industrial technology, with sophisticated mine drainage systems powered by ever more efficient steam driven pumping engines designed and built here in the town. Hayle's mining technology was synonymous with innovation, quality and reliability: this is why Hayle's industrial heritage is an important part of Cornwall's industrial heritage; and why Cornwall's industrial heritage is a crucial part of the world's industrial heritage. Evidence of Cousin Jack and Cornish engineering can be found in mining communities all over the world, including places as far away as Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Australia Visitors from all over world may recognise Cornish pumping and winding engines and their engine houses from examples exported with Cornish miners, expertise and equipment. Now Hayle's industrial infrastructure has been included in the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape - inscribed as a World Heritage Site on 13 June 2006. For detailed information about the Cornish Mining WHS please visit the dedicated web site (http://www.cornish-mining.org.uk). The Hayle Estuary, Minerals surviving Georgian and Victorian quays, bustling quays. Harvey & Co and the Harvey & Co, for their part, & Trade holding pools, canal, floating dock and Cornish Copper Co were both heavily worked with the great engineers Richard The Hayle estuary has provided sluices was begun in the 1740s, with involved in mining as major Trevithick, William West and, later on, a safe harbour and focus for settlement John “Merchant” Curnow's Quay shareholders and as suppliers of Arthur Woolf to help create Cornwall's since prehistory. The Iron Age hill fort at surviving from that date. Modern Hayle equipment and materials in the 19th unrivalled engineering expertise, and to Carnsew and a small Roman fort on the began with a large copper smelter at century with the ever-increasing need for expand the company's interest from site of Lelant churchyard controlled Penpol set up by Gideon Cosier of quayside space to facilitate the import of basic mining tools into iron founding, access to the estuary for hundreds of Perranzabuloe between 1710 and 1735. timber, rope and other materials for the mine engines and shipbuilding before it years. The estuary was home to This was followed in the mid-18th century mines and the export of the mined ores, dwindled away as it's then cutting edge important international tin trading in the by the construction of a copper smelter mining machinery and, eventually, technology was superseded in the 20th 5th-7th centuries that probably helped near Angarrack by the Cornish Copper foodstuffs. The intensity of the rivalry century. Richard Trevithick married into spread Christianity. Trade in mediaeval Company (after which Copperhouse between the firms served to divide the the Harvey family but, oddly enough, it times produced a network of quays came to be known) and later, in 1779, by communities they supported, the work was his absence abroad that affected around the estuary serviced by roads to blacksmith John Harvey from Carnhell forces infamously becoming engaged in the appearance of Foundry – two White the waterside, causeways across the Green who set up a small iron foundry a pitched battle at Penpol as Harveys' Hart Hotels! mud flats and a ferry across the estuary and engineering works at Carnsew men were sent to dig a navigation The Two Companies mouth. Tin streaming was a major (Harvey & Co, after whose works channel to their quay in 1818-1819 while The Cornish Copper Company industry by the 1530s, Leland noting in Foundry came to be known). As time the Copperhouse men were sent to fill it was constituted in 1755 as a rolling 21 his travels that it had been responsible went by, the two firms with their different back in, at least in part to preserve the year partnership of leading for clogging the estuary up to St Erth, business structures - the Cornish tidal ford to Lelant that is now blocked by entrepreneurs and moved to Angarrack requiring a new port at the estuary Copper Company being shareholder the northern end of Penpol Quay. As in 1757. The company was smelting mouth. based and Harvey & Co being family economic circumstances changed, the copper from the mid 18th century to Industrial Development: based – developed very differently in copper company turned to ironwork and around 1810 and was recycling its the 18th century onwards terms of their character and operation. mining machinery (Sandys, Carne & smelter slag - called scoria - by casting it Mining of tin and copper in west Evidence that their different company Vivian) in direct competition with Harvey into large building blocks with which it Cornwall drove the area's industrial styles strongly influenced the town's and Co, both companies introducing constructed its quays and the dock at development and the growth of hamlets physical development is left imprinted on steam powered engines to drain and Copperhouse. It was the only company bordering the estuary from the 18th the two separate and distinctive exploit ever deeper mines and in Cornwall ever to smelt copper in large century. The large scale of the estuary, company settlements that grew up culminating in each eventually making quantities but eventually it became a its proximity to mines and easy access around their respective bases. Indeed, one of the world's largest pair of pumps general foundry building Cornish beam to Welsh coal, Welsh smelters and the modern Hayle can really only be to drain the Harlemmermeer in Holland. engines. The firm enjoyed over a great trading centre of Bristol made it an understood in these terms. Clifton Terrace commemorates Sandys, century of progress and development of ideal trading port, the economic success A Tale of Two Sites Carne and Vivian's winning the contract the area which became known as of winning and exporting the minerals The two firms grew rapidly as to provide Brunel with chains for the Copperhouse after the business, but eventually and consequentially traders and engineers servicing the Bristol suspension bridge; Brunel is said now the canal and dock are the most developing food production and milling expanding mining industry, and so did to have tested their prototype and prominent remains of the company's into major local industries too. the competition between them for praised their skill and workmanship. industrial archaeological heritage. It paid The elaborate network of access to the waterside hards and its workers in money which accounts for the purpose-built shops lining the streets the Harveys had no control.Penpol, partly altered by the sluices constructed Railway was passed in 1834, and the of Copperhouse and the presence of where the first recorded industry started, to managing the flushing of silt and sand line was opened in 1837 with its public houses there; its social and has a number of late 19th and early 20th from Harveys' deep-water channel. The terminus just south of the viaduct in business attitudes are also reflected in century structures – St Elwyn's Church, waterside complex built by the Cornish Foundry Square. The route was from its laying out of building plots in the the Drill Hall, the Passmore Edwards Copper Co in 1768/9 survives in large Hayle to Redruth, with branches to tightly knit area around St Johns Street Institute and the War Memorial - that measure on land reclaimed using Portreath, Crofty Mine, North Roskear and Cross Street for its workers' housing were clearly intended to bridge the crushed slag (scoria) from the smelter or Mine and Tresavean. In 1843 the first and the provision of scoria blocks for neutral ground between the two enclosed by cast scoria blocks. The regular passenger service was begun building them. In contrast, Harvey & Co company settlements and help heal the group includes the (floating) dock with between Hayle and Redruth. A new was a family business that looked first to social rifts between their communities. the remains of its wooden gates, branch of the railway was extended in its own, and the grand houses of the Quays and hydrology wharves and a canal to deep water. The 1852 from the new West Cornwall family and directors can be found in The estuary is fed by several canal bank of crushed scoria is still Railway station and goods yard east of Millpond Avenue overlooking the mill sources, notably the Hayle and Penpol marked with some mooring posts, while the Foundry viaduct at Penpol to various pond and further up Foundry Hill. Their Rivers, the Angarrack stream from the the dock is a well made structure of cast works on the south west side of Hayle provision of accommodation for their east and a couple more streams running scoria blocks, its walls scalloped to Towans along North Quay. This link was workforce was much less and more off Lelant Downs to the west. The Hayle accommodate boats. Like Carnsew made necessary by the re-routing of the closely targeted, for example, the Estuary is a huge, relatively shallow Pool, Copperhouse Pool also provided main line by-passing the Rivière route of attractive little row of houses known as complex with a good tidal range: an the Cornish Copper Co with a holding the old Hayle Railway, the wharf-side rail Drovers' Row housing the heavy horse enormous volume of water passes pool for sluicing silt from its deep-water system of which was maintained and drovers from the foundry farm.

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